Carter

I don't know what this is. I really don't. It's not a book. Just a little thing.

Afternoon sunlight lay butter-yellow across the manicured grass of the practice field. The varsity team was fanned across the grass in basketball shorts and sweat-soaked t-shirts, doing burpees. A red-faced strength coach screamed encouragements, and water boys stood at the ready, cups all lined up on the long table that held the Gatorade cooler.

Carter Michaels sat on the top row of the bleachers, hands linked between his knees, wearing the black leather cut that marked him as a Lean Dog, watching practice unfold from behind the lenses of a pair of Ray-Bans Aidan had gifted him two Christmases ago.

That had been him once. Down there. Stinking, and dripping sweat, all his muscles screaming at him to stop. One more rep. One more set. Push, push, push. Race to the finish line which was Friday night: the lights, the cheering crowds, the girls with starstruck gazes. The chewed-up turf, the crash of helmets clipping one another, the whistle, the perfect spiral leaving his hand. And it didn’t matter that he got sacked, and all two-hundred-eighty pounds of the other team’s center was bearing him down to the grass, because he’d gotten the throw away in time, and down field, it landed feather-soft in Darius’s hands, and the crowd was losing their minds.

He’d been homecoming king his senior year.

And the fall after that, he’d worn the maroon and white of Texas A&M; walked out of the tunnel into the deafening, impossible vastness of Kyle Field and blinked up at lights that were far, far brighter than the ones around Knoxville High’s field, paltry by comparison.

But that was all before.

He smiled a little to himself now, because it was hard to look back and believe that he’d ever thought that – son of a drunk, a nobody from nowhere special – he was destined for great things. He’d touched greatness once, almost; had just skimmed it with his fingertips. But then the injury. Reality.

He was a part of something now. Something that wasn’t anything like maroon and white on a Saturday night.

But it was…

It wasn’t bad.

Most of the time he was almost happy.

On the field, Coach gave a short blast with the whistle and the players collapsed onto the grass with relieved groans. The water boys swooped in with cups dripping condensation.

It wasn’t a good thing to reduce people to stereotypes, but when he was in high school, there had been four kinds of boys: the ones who feared the Dogs, who hated the Dogs, who wanted to be Dogs…and the ones who didn’t care at all.

Mason Stephens had hated them, as had all the others of his ilk: plenty of money, plenty of bad attitude, and a choking fear that, with their boat shoes and their creased khakis, they could never be as masculine as the city’s leather-clad biker crowd.

Carter had always been one of the ones who didn’t care. The Dogs didn’t go looking for trouble in town, and Carter wasn’t the sort to go looking for the Dogs.

But. Here he sat, wallet chain, scuffed boots, running black dog ring on his hand and all.

Life was funny like that sometimes.

He heard the sharp rap of pointed-toed shoes on the bleachers, and turned to see Jazz on the bottom row, picking her way deftly up, even in stilettos, coming to him.

He started to rise, hand already out to offer help, but she waved him back down.

“Just stay, I’m coming,” she called, and a few moments later was sitting down beside him, smelling of the flower she was named for, hair catching the light. She was wearing slender dark blue slacks and a white shirt tucked in. Small silver hoops in her ears. Makeup muted. Very professional.

“How’d it go?” he asked. He started to put his arm around her shoulders, but didn’t. Something about the field. He felt impossibly young at the moment.

“Good.” She nodded, and then smiled a little. “Really good. The teacher’s nice. Ava said she would be.”

“Yeah? That’s good.”

She turned to face him, then, and the lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth were laugh lines. “I think I can do this.”

“I know you can.”

Today had been the first meeting of her GED prep course, held after hours at the high school, one of the English teachers making a little extra money helping non-traditional students prepare for the exam. Jazz wanted her GED, and she was collecting shiny business school brochures in a folder that sat on her nightstand. She wanted her own business. She had a three-year plan…and Carter didn’t know how he fit into it. If he did. Or if he wanted to.

Jasmine’s smile turned sad. “Oh, baby boy.” She reached to smooth his hair back, nails scraping lightly at his scalp.

“What?”

She glanced toward the field, and then back. “You miss it, don’t you?”

“No…?” It came out a question. He shook his head. “No, I don’t.” His stomach cramped when he thought about laying his fingers between the laces again; his shoulder throbbed, phantom anxiety pain.

“Hmm,” she hummed unconvinced. “But you’re not happy.”

“No, I…” But there was a hollowness inside him. He watched Jazz setting goals and making plans for herself, and he was so glad for her…and lost as a puppy. “I’m excited for you,” he said, forcefully.

She tipped her head, lips pursed. “I know you are, honey. You’re very sweet. But you should be excited about something of your own, too.”

“I have the club.”

Her smile widened, melancholy and sympathetic. “Yeah, you do. But I dunno if that’s enough for you.”

And.

And maybe…

Maybe it wasn’t.